High School Musical: Makin' the Cut! Review

Find the rhythm and tap along with Disney's teenaged stars.

You can always count on Disney to capitalize on success. Spin-offs and sequels, merchandising and ice skating tours all always come quickly on the heels of a hit, and that's what's happened here with High School Musical. Originally a made-for-TV movie that aired on the Disney Channel early last year, High School Musical has since expanded exponentially. It's got two follow-up films on the way. It's on stage. It's tearing up the charts in iTunes downloads and Billboard record sales, it's revitalizing drama clubs across the country, it's got a junior novel book series ... it's a big Disney deal.

So there's a lot of pressure placed on this, the first tie-in video game for the franchise – High School Musical: Makin' the Cut!. The game picks up after the events of the original film, and finds teen drama queen Sharpay Evans signing herself and the other East High School singers up for a cross-country musical competition. Though not all excited to be a part of the tour at first, each of the six different students ultimately come together to put on the best show possible, by both singing and dancing in a variety of venues.

Makin' the Cut! employs a rhythm action interface to follow along with each sung song, and fans of last year's DS Game of the Year, Elite Beat Agents, will be those most familiar with the style. Circular icons appear on the touch screen and fill in with color in a clockwise wheel – when they're fully filled, it's time to tap with the stylus. More icons will then appear in sequence, and your tapping is supposed to match the beat of the current song. If you're on target with your tempo, you'll get a High School high score and move the story bus along to the next stop on the tour.

One early oddity is the game's similarity in Dance and Music events. Though presented as separate modes of play, both are built around that same basic mechanic of tapping buttons to the beat – so it feels like you're getting less gameplay than you should. This is reinforced by the display that takes place on the upper screen, which shows two of the East High characters looping through set dancing animations regardless of whether the current level is labeled as a dance or a vocal competition.

There are some distinctions, though. Only in Dance mode will you occasionally be asked to drag a basketball to an on-screen hoop (a reference to main character Troy's membership on the East High hoops squad) or trace drawn patterns in the pages of an interstitial notebook. And only in Music mode will you switch between different instruments, altering the sound of your accompaniment – but the only real gameplay difference there is the addition of draglines, again similar to Elite Beat Agents.

High School Musical never achieves the impact and energy of the Agents, though, never feeling quite as frantic as Nintendo's own take on the genre. But this is likely a large result of song selection, and Makin' the Cut! can't be faulted there – it has twelve tracks total, from both the first and second Musical movies, and all of them sound great coming through the DS speakers. It's the most important element of any music-based game to have strong music to be based upon, and it holds true here. Makin' the Cut! has an excellent soundtrack that fans of the High School Musical franchise will love and won't get tired of, even if the gameplay accompanying each song is a bit more basic, restricted and easier than that found elsewhere on Nintendo's dual-screened system.

The long-term appeal of the game comes through a standard array of progressive unlockables. Greater difficulty settings, more venues in which to sing, more outfits to wear while singing and a multi-card multiplayer mode all extend the experience. Probably the most unique extra, though, is the game's video editor. It allows you to play director, switching between camera views, setting off special effects and yelling commands into the DS microphone while two of the student stars do their thing on stage. You can then save the videos to view later, or to trade with friends who also own a copy of the game.

The Verdict

High School Musical has become a huge hit, the most successful Disney Channel original movie ever made. It's a little overwhelming just how many different spin-off and sequel projects have been birthed as a result of those high ratings, but, luckily, most of those seem to be preserving the quality of the original production – as does the franchise's DS debut, Makin' the Cut!. This rhythm action title isn't as engaging or energetic as Nintendo's Elite Beat Agents, but it does get its presentation and soundtrack just right. Fans of the films, then, would be well served to pick up a copy and play along, reliving the songs of the past, a few from the future, and filling some of their free time while they wait for the next tie-in book, show, movie or take-home board game.